Seems like there are a lot of ways that employers are effectively blaming their employees for COVID. Some of the anecdotes in this article really resonated with me. It does feel "super shitty" when you feel as though you've been barely holding it together during what has undoubtedly been one of the most difficult years of the previous century and yet your employer seems to feel entitled to hold you to the usual standards. The tech industry (well, the "business" industry really) lately seems just so utterly inhuman that I've seriously considered getting out of it for good and becoming something like a technological hermit. But I can't be a "business" hermit so I'm still trying to figure that one out.
Afterword: I feel like this post is a good litmus test for identifying which respondents are in the C suite lol.
> so utterly inhuman
t
I worked for a company once that moved offices-- literally, there was no workplace to go to for 2 weeks (keep in mind this company made hardware).
The C level management sends out a company wide e-mail saying "the move will not be tolerated as an excuse for missing deadlines."
I work in tech, and my company has bent over backwards to help us. Dozens of extra days off I'm having a hard time even using, an extra 4 days off a year (one per quarter) where the whole company is off, constantly reminding us ourselves and our families come first, and encouraging others to be understanding that our coworkers might be working unusual schedules as they juggle remote-learning kids, childcare, elder care, and other life priorities during such a difficult period.
It's not everywhere, and maybe it's not even the norm, but surely other companies are supportive of their employees as well.
I have tried to gently help my corporate overlords to understand that wfh is something happening that they need to react to, not a decision they get to make. It is 100% not working. The convo goes like this:
Them: We understand the concerns, but we have decided that the return to the office will be mandatory.
Me: So those who are not comfortable returning to the office will be let go?
Them: No! Yo mean fired? Good heavens, no! No one will be let go. But they will have to return to the office.
Unpopular opinion - is the CEO really threatening her employees? Or talking more abstractly about the downsides and ramifications of people deciding to work remotely? Ie, downsides that people would face at many/most companies, not just her own. I read the original article with a more charitable assumption, and the latter is how it came across to me.
"If you park in my driveway again, I will have your car towed" - very clear threat.
"If you go around parking in people's driveways, you run the risk of having your car towed" - maybe a threat, maybe not, depending on how the person says it
"I understand that you parked in my driveway yesterday, because of an emergency. No problem. But if you continue doing it regularly, please be aware that I might need to have your car towed, if I urgently need to use the driveway myself" - I suppose this is a threat too, but probably justifiable.
Maybe others would consider this to be cynical, but I've always considered compensation and job stability to be directly correlated to the amount of value you provide as an employee. If an employer thinks that remote-working will reduce the amount of value I bring to the company, I would certainly expect that to have an impact on my career growth. If my manager tells me this directly, I would thank him for the upfront feedback. I would also consider working for a different company that has a different perspective on this topic... the exact same way I shop around for employers that offer the best work-life balance. But either way, there wouldn't be any hard feelings on my side, and I'm puzzled by the outrage around this article.
The Washingtonian's employees presumably know their CEO better than any of us do, and their interpretation of the op-ed resulted in them organizing a work stoppage the next day.
So maybe your reading is a bit too charitable, as it seems like all the employees heard the threat loud and clear.
First of all, the pandemic is still happening. Imagine telling your neighbor about the abstract dangers of parking in your driveway when they're currently doing so because their house blew up and they don't have anywhere else to park.
Second, the CEO published this without talking to a single one of their employees about the issue. Why? "I am concerned about the unfortunately common office worker who wants to continue working at home and just go into the office on occasion." Can you imagine your colleague stating this publicly without ever speaking to you about it? It's incredibly disrespectful. Your neighbor is parked in your driveway out of necessity, and you're within earshot asking a friend "Can you believe these people who think they can park wherever they want? I hope they realize how easy it is to tow a car off your own property."
Meaning exists in how language is interpreted by the intended audience, in this case, that audience identified this as a threat. No other interpretations are pertinent.
I think one of the consequences of work from home culture will be less of an emphasis on how many hours you work, and more focus on what you produce, and how that can be monetized.
What this means is that a good manager will farm work out all over the place finding the right mix of quality / quantity / price.
People will not be paid salaries, they will be paid per unit of work.
Rather than interviewing people to join your family, businesses will be running a continual review of work producs and more carefully measure that mix of quality / quantity / price. Each cycle letting go the least desirable contractors and giving new contractors a try.
On-boarding new contractors will be streamlined, and how fast the contractor gets started will be the first quality control checkpoint.
Converting staff to contractor status sounds like a layoff, making said staff eligible for generous covid unemployment relief and fully subsidized cobra health insurance payments until September.
> "The original headline of the piece was itself an unsubtle threat: “As a CEO, I want my employees to understand the risks of not returning to work in the office.” (Over email, Washington Post Opinion editor Fred Hiatt told me that Merrill did not write the headline. “I asked our team to change it early this morning to something I thought better captured the piece,” he said.)"
As an aside, this unethical practice in the media irks me. It's really despicable for the Washington Post to write a headline from the perspective of the CEO, which the CEO never said themselves.
Does anyone know of any good non-partisan orgs that attempt to quantify and track these unethical practices across the media landscape?
FYI, from my understanding this is an extremely common behavior for most op-ed boards ex adding a headline when none was sent in, or editing the submission itself for length/formatting/etc. Most groups will require you sign something allowing them to review and publish the letter and may request sources or your own connections to the topic to identify and disclose a conflict of interest. This generally makes op-eds more reliable gauge of public opinion and viewpoints vs a blog style opinion article bashing an industry rival.
It's also important to note that local papers may print what is provided vs editing for spelling/grammar or even fact checking a submission. Larger publishers who by simply printing it add weight to the original may exercise a higher degree of involvement. For a look at the NYT process when you submit a piece: https://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/14/opinion/op-ed-and-you.htm...
Anecdotal, but every letter I remember I or my family wrote to the local paper was edited in some fashion, most often for length. Short articles were the least touched, if at all, as they had the least content to make fit on a page of newsprint. I think it's also near impossible to get a non-partisan source either simply because that term is applied to basic human decency these days like how it's apparently partisan to wear a mask.
Wow, using an op-ed in the Washington Post to threaten her employees' careers? Where is this one in the How To Be A Great Leader manual? Wouldn't a private internal memo be at least marginally better than picking a fight publicly?
Why are executives, regardless of industry, digging in and going to such great lengths to insist that physical presence in a purpose-built office building is the only possible way to work?
Kudos for the employees to be able to organize and shut down operations for the day. I hope that it’s not only symbolic. What would it take for the CEO to get replaced?
This is hilarious. I was completely predicting this would happen when the time comes. The author nailed it precisely in this:
>The true issue at hand is not, ultimately, where we will work, but how we will work. Remote work forces you to change the how. It is not a cure for shitty management or a bad business model or a bad product. It is merely an organizing principle — it forces you to the hard work of listening to and trusting employees. It pushes executives to build a culture with intention and long-term vision.
>If history is any guide, the business case for remote work HAS been made.
Management is increasingly becoming irrelevant. The fear of being irrelevant will drive all sort of drama as work forces returning to office.
I really can't tell, but the meat of the difference is that the warning would be about what other people will do, not himself. (So it makes sense to publish a warning on the media, but it makes much less rational sense to publish a threat. But there's no reason to be sure he is acting rationally.)
Anyway, it's a very narcissistic comment. CEOs will do what the competition for labor allows them to do, the ones that do anything more will fail. There's a huge and complex society deciding those factors, he (or the ones he is warning about) does not get to choose.
My company is on the next stage, which is vaccine threatening. I’ve already been through my first dose and will get a second, but the corporate threat to others is: if you don’t get a vaccine you may not be able to go to client sites and complete your job (i.e you’ll probably be fired.) They haven’t yet made a decision on whether vaccines will be required for the office that they’re making people return to. I endorse vaccination and would recommend it if asked, but it doesn’t sit right with me to force people into making a decision that they’re uncomfortable with. If we don’t get vaccination high enough for herd immunity it would be something that you could start to make a case for, but we have to see how the voluntary participation goes first.
[+] [-] davesque|4 years ago|reply
Afterword: I feel like this post is a good litmus test for identifying which respondents are in the C suite lol.
[+] [-] oceanghost|4 years ago|reply
The C level management sends out a company wide e-mail saying "the move will not be tolerated as an excuse for missing deadlines."
God I wish I had a copy of that e-mail.
[+] [-] rconti|4 years ago|reply
It's not everywhere, and maybe it's not even the norm, but surely other companies are supportive of their employees as well.
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] paleotrope|4 years ago|reply
That seems a bit hyperbolic.
[+] [-] ineptech|4 years ago|reply
Them: We understand the concerns, but we have decided that the return to the office will be mandatory.
Me: So those who are not comfortable returning to the office will be let go?
Them: No! Yo mean fired? Good heavens, no! No one will be let go. But they will have to return to the office.
[+] [-] heavyset_go|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] whack|4 years ago|reply
"If you park in my driveway again, I will have your car towed" - very clear threat.
"If you go around parking in people's driveways, you run the risk of having your car towed" - maybe a threat, maybe not, depending on how the person says it
"I understand that you parked in my driveway yesterday, because of an emergency. No problem. But if you continue doing it regularly, please be aware that I might need to have your car towed, if I urgently need to use the driveway myself" - I suppose this is a threat too, but probably justifiable.
Maybe others would consider this to be cynical, but I've always considered compensation and job stability to be directly correlated to the amount of value you provide as an employee. If an employer thinks that remote-working will reduce the amount of value I bring to the company, I would certainly expect that to have an impact on my career growth. If my manager tells me this directly, I would thank him for the upfront feedback. I would also consider working for a different company that has a different perspective on this topic... the exact same way I shop around for employers that offer the best work-life balance. But either way, there wouldn't be any hard feelings on my side, and I'm puzzled by the outrage around this article.
[+] [-] variaga|4 years ago|reply
So maybe your reading is a bit too charitable, as it seems like all the employees heard the threat loud and clear.
[+] [-] burkaman|4 years ago|reply
Second, the CEO published this without talking to a single one of their employees about the issue. Why? "I am concerned about the unfortunately common office worker who wants to continue working at home and just go into the office on occasion." Can you imagine your colleague stating this publicly without ever speaking to you about it? It's incredibly disrespectful. Your neighbor is parked in your driveway out of necessity, and you're within earshot asking a friend "Can you believe these people who think they can park wherever they want? I hope they realize how easy it is to tow a car off your own property."
[+] [-] ricardobeat|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nr2x|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] autokad|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jay_kyburz|4 years ago|reply
What this means is that a good manager will farm work out all over the place finding the right mix of quality / quantity / price.
People will not be paid salaries, they will be paid per unit of work.
Rather than interviewing people to join your family, businesses will be running a continual review of work producs and more carefully measure that mix of quality / quantity / price. Each cycle letting go the least desirable contractors and giving new contractors a try.
On-boarding new contractors will be streamlined, and how fast the contractor gets started will be the first quality control checkpoint.
[+] [-] SketchySeaBeast|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] floren|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] commandlinefan|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] toomuchtodo|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] FFRefresh|4 years ago|reply
As an aside, this unethical practice in the media irks me. It's really despicable for the Washington Post to write a headline from the perspective of the CEO, which the CEO never said themselves.
Does anyone know of any good non-partisan orgs that attempt to quantify and track these unethical practices across the media landscape?
[+] [-] charwalker|4 years ago|reply
Some groups like NYT have retired the term 'Op-Ed' name in favor of something like Guest Essays as it better conveys the intention of the submission: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/26/opinion/nyt-opinion-oped-...
It's also important to note that local papers may print what is provided vs editing for spelling/grammar or even fact checking a submission. Larger publishers who by simply printing it add weight to the original may exercise a higher degree of involvement. For a look at the NYT process when you submit a piece: https://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/14/opinion/op-ed-and-you.htm...
Anecdotal, but every letter I remember I or my family wrote to the local paper was edited in some fashion, most often for length. Short articles were the least touched, if at all, as they had the least content to make fit on a page of newsprint. I think it's also near impossible to get a non-partisan source either simply because that term is applied to basic human decency these days like how it's apparently partisan to wear a mask.
[+] [-] ryandrake|4 years ago|reply
Why are executives, regardless of industry, digging in and going to such great lengths to insist that physical presence in a purpose-built office building is the only possible way to work?
[+] [-] oceanghost|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] FredPret|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Muromec|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] twobitshifter|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bitcuration|4 years ago|reply
>The true issue at hand is not, ultimately, where we will work, but how we will work. Remote work forces you to change the how. It is not a cure for shitty management or a bad business model or a bad product. It is merely an organizing principle — it forces you to the hard work of listening to and trusting employees. It pushes executives to build a culture with intention and long-term vision. >If history is any guide, the business case for remote work HAS been made.
Management is increasingly becoming irrelevant. The fear of being irrelevant will drive all sort of drama as work forces returning to office.
[+] [-] GoToRO|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zero_deg_kevin|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] marcosdumay|4 years ago|reply
I really can't tell, but the meat of the difference is that the warning would be about what other people will do, not himself. (So it makes sense to publish a warning on the media, but it makes much less rational sense to publish a threat. But there's no reason to be sure he is acting rationally.)
Anyway, it's a very narcissistic comment. CEOs will do what the competition for labor allows them to do, the ones that do anything more will fail. There's a huge and complex society deciding those factors, he (or the ones he is warning about) does not get to choose.
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] neuro_image2|4 years ago|reply
This article is just another typical example of the parasitic administrator class devaluing the people that do real work.
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] kingsuper20|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] CameronNemo|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xboxnolifes|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] twobitshifter|4 years ago|reply